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| EDRS Rollout is Complete! |
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Congratulations to everyone! We completed the initial statewide rollout of our Electronic Death Registration System (EDRS) in July 2007. All counties have received training and all funeral homes and medical offices are now able to participate in EDRS.
We wish to extend special thanks to the funeral homes. As of May 11th, we have trained at least one person in 204 of the 207 funeral homes who file death certificates in Oregon. This is a 97% success rate in training funeral homes, which is just outstanding! Looking further at who’s actually using the system after training, we see that 146 funeral homes used EDRS at least once in the last three months, which is 71% of those trained.
In addition to the increasing funeral home usage, we continue to add medical certifiers to the system and this will be covered in more detail on the next page. As would be expected from this increased EDRS usage, we have an increasing number of death certificates filed in EDRS, either in whole or in part. In the last quarter of 2007, 8% of all death certificates were filed completely electronically, with both the funeral and medical certifier completing their portion online. An additional 34% of all certificates were hybrid, with the funeral home completing their portion electronically and the medical certifier on paper. (The remaining 58% were filed completely on paper.)
Initially, we had hoped to have about 10% of certificates filed completely electronically by September 2007 but we’re a bit short of that. However, we are happy with the 8%, given the delay in starting the project. As we continue to add medical certifiers, we are confident that we will soon reach the 10% mark.
Thank you to the Oregon Funeral Directors Association!
The Oregon Funeral Directors Association (OFDA) has been a strong supporter of EDRS since the beginning. We wish to express a warm and sincere thank you to the OFDA for this support! It has been a major benefit to us during implementation of the project.
For the third consecutive year, our office had an exhibitor table at the annual OFDA conference, held last month. During this conference, we had a chance to talk with numerous funeral directors and other funeral home staff about EDRS and the challenges and successes we faced. We received welcome feedback and excellent ideas from you and hope to continue this as we further develop the system.
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| Medical certifiers - where's the docs? |
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Of course, the largest challenge to increased EDRS usage is getting doctors on board and we continue to have success with that. As of mid-May, we have 1,043 medical certifiers trained and able to use the system. These doctors and other medical practitioners accounted for 32% of all death certifications in 2007. This means that about a third of death certificates could be completed entirely within EDRS!
Because we have staff dedicated to recruiting medical certifiers and we offer flexible training methods and schedules, we are having significant success in getting medical certifiers on EDRS. It may not seem like there is a lot of success at initial glance, because of how many doctors are still to be added. However, other states are interested in how Oregon was able to be so successful in getting medical certifiers on board. We’re definitely among the leaders in this regard.
The large medical practice chains, such as OHSU, Kaiser, Peach Health, Providence and Legacy, are generally in the middle of pilot testing EDRS at one of their clinics. After the pilot phase goes well, these medical practices will expand EDRS for system-wide use in their organization. We expect that these large practices will have fully implemented EDRS by the end of the summer.
The best news is that once we convince medical certifiers to give EDRS a try, they generally love it!
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| EDRS is Faster! |
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In a previous edition of this newsletter, we reported preliminary results on how much time was saved when using EDRS. Now that the system has been in use for two years we have enough records to make definite conclusions about how using EDRS compares to paper death certificates.
The short answer is that fully electronic records are two days faster to register, on average, than paper records! This is to be expected with not having to mail certificates back and forth. Drop to paper records are almost a half day faster than paper records overall.
This comparison is based on all death certificates filed in 2007. It excludes medical examiner cases, because the delays in these cases are due to the additional investigation involved and not the method of filing the certificate. (Medical examiner cases take about 6 days longer, overall.)
On average, fully electronic records are registered in 8.0 days, while drop to paper records register in 9.8 days and paper records in 10.2 days.
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| OVERS - Tips, Tricks and Tidbits |
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This section is a collection of tips, tricks and tidbits about EDRS. Most of this information is on our Web site and the next article goes into more depth on how to access the site as well as the types of information available.
SSA Form 721 – We still hear occasionally from funeral homes that their local SSA office is continuing to request the Form 721, even though you have submitted the SSN through the EDRS online verification system. As you know, if you enter the death certificate in EDRS (either fully electronic or drop-to-paper) and submit the SSN, you do not need to complete Form 721. We sent you a letter from the national SSA office confirming this and it is also available on our Web site. We will be re-sending this letter to all local SSA offices and the national office will also be contacting the local offices about this matter.
Request Medical Certification & Refer to Medical Examiner – We are hearing some confusion about how to use these two methods for sending a case to a medical certifier. If the case is being referred to a medical examiner, you should only use the “Refer to Medical Examiner” button. You should not use the “Request Medical Certification button which is used only for non-ME cases.
PO Boxes & Apartment Numbers – Post office box addresses should have the street number field left blank (do not enter a hyphen) and the complete box address entered in the street name field, as in this example: PO Box 1234. We would prefer that you not use the periods after the P and O. Also, for apartment numbers, only enter the number in the field, do not enter “Apt.” or “#” ahead of the number.
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| Don't Forget Our Project Web site! |
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Our Web site continues to be a great resource for you to stay current on OVERS. The latest news appears on the main page in addition to a Frequently Asked Questions section, tips, tutorials and other information. The Training page contains information on our ongoing training program, including contract information for additional training. You can also check the whether the OVERS software is online on our status page.
User guides are also available on the Resources page along with system requirements, forms and links to various state and national vital records resources. You can also find the drivers needed for the biometric (fingerprint) devices (including Windows Vista support) in case you can’t find your installation CD.
You can find the OVERS Web site at www.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/overs.
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| Let Us Know About Staff Turnover |
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If you have staff in your office who are EDRS users, we would like you to let us know when those staff leave your office. Then we can change their account settings in the system so they can no longer access your funeral home or medical office death certificates.
Similarly if you have new staff come on board, simply complete a user enrollment form (available on our project Web site) and fax it to us. We will create a user account and send the login information. If any new staff need to electronically sign death certificates, they can then contact your local county vital records office and make an appointment to have their fingerprints entered into the system.
Or you can call our office to see if any of our staff may be in your area soon and will be able to enroll the fingerprints in person.
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| PDF Version of OVERS News |
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The sections above contain all of the articles in OVERS News, Issue 7. You can also get a pdf file of the original printed newsletter.
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